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By James Kelly, January 28, 2010

Kevin Costner – he built it, and they actually did come

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Whoever said ‘if we build it, they will come‘, wasn’t a web designer.

He was, in fact, the ghost of a baseball player, speaking to a farmer from Iowa. However, ghostly apparitions aside, as anyone who has built a website (started a facebook page/ Twitter account/ Ning community, etc etc) will know, putting something up online is only half the battle, it takes work to get the word out, and to get traffic in.

So while the arts in Ireland is seeing an increasing amount of high quality work occurring online, these endeavours aren’t always getting the attention they deserve. We’re looking to provide a platform to showcase new work in this area, and with any luck to help bring this work to a wider arts public, nationally and internationally.

So, if you’re using the internet to present work in a new way, if you’re launching a dynamic new website, if you’ve a new and imaginative ways of engaging with new audiences online, drop an email to james.kelly(at)artsaudiences.ie. Looking forward to hearing from you!

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By James Kelly, November 20, 2009

great to see the introduction of flash mobs as part of the strategy of the dynamic National Campaign For The Arts.

Here is footage of last  Saturday’s flashmob in Cork;

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Wexford plays host to the next event of this kind – co-ordinated by masters of street performance,  Bui Bolg, the A for Arts Masked Flash Mob Event will take place in Wexford Town 12pm Saturday 21st Nov – expect something special!

All of this is of course done to highlight the importance of the arts to the everyday lives of all Ireland citizens – if you haven’t already signed the petition, please do, by clicking here

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By James Kelly, November 12, 2009

Photo copyright Eric Orns 2000

The Brooklyn Museum used online crowdsourcing to a exciting end, in the conception and delivery of their Click! photography exhibition, in a process which invited the museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process.

It began with an open call—artists were asked to electronically submit a work of photography that responds to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” along with an artist statement.

After the conclusion of the open call, an online forum opened for audience evaluation of all submissions (all works were posted as anonymous). As part of the evaluation, each visitor answered a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise.

Click! culminated in an exhibition at the Museum, where the artworks were installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process.

The results are, of course, online, where the public can engage with discussions and analysis of the work, and the entire process.

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By James Kelly, August 25, 2009

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Seeking to build new audiences for its work, the San Francisco Opera, well aware of the challenges in bringing new audiences into traditional performance spaces, brought the mountain to Moses. In June 2008, they  staged a free simulcast of Lucia di Lammermoor in the AT&T baseball park . The performance took place in the War Memorial Opera House, and using their website to draw audiences, the opera was relayed live to the stadium where 23,000 attended. This attendance has since been topped by this year’s simulcast of Tosca, which drew a crowd of 27,000.

Speaking of the first screening, the opera’s director of marketing Marcia Lazer told the Wallace Foundation;

“In our 2007-8 season, we analyzed our data base for the number of audience members 25-44 years old and found that 19 percent of our patrons were in that age range. One of our (…) goals over next few years is to increase that base by 15 percent.

“We scheduled a simulcast of Lucia di Lammermoor to AT&T Park in June 2008 and offered signups on the web, and that is probably the most important thing we did because it was the only way to get contact information. When we did a demographic overlay of the list, we found that 30 percent of our 9,000 signups were between 25 and 44. The best thing about the simulcasts is they invite in a much younger audience than we get in the opera house”.

Beyond the success of that single event, however, were the longer-term payoffs for the Opera in building a database of potential future ticket-buyers: 8,660 households signed up online for pre-event registration, 30 percent of whom were between 25 and 44, and more than 5,300 of the sign-ups were not previously on the Opera’s Tessitura database.

Those interested in attending next month’s free upcoming simulcast of Il Travatore can sign up here.  This link also offers the visitor the opportunity to hear extracts from the opera and to read a plot summary, as well as offering the opportunity to buy a picnic basket for the night out. Focaccia anyone?